


A Picture

by holtzbabe



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 04:15:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16757743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holtzbabe/pseuds/holtzbabe
Summary: It starts with a picture.





	A Picture

It starts with a picture.

Erin pauses on her way to the kitchen, backtracking a few steps to bend over and pick up the framed photograph on her end table that, unless she’s losing her mind, was not there last night.

She looks up. Holtz is kicked back on the couch, feet on the coffee table even though she knows Erin doesn’t allow it, flicking through channels on the TV with a frequency that gives Erin a headache.

“What is this?”

Holtz doesn’t take her eyes off the TV. “Picture.”

“Of you. Yes. Did you put this here?”

Now Holtz’s eyes flicker over. “Yep. You don’t have any pictures of me in this apartment.”

“I don’t have pictures of anyone,” Erin says.

“Exactly.” Holtz nods her head. “You should have photos of me. We’re dating.”

“We’re not dating,” Erin says automatically.

Holtz rolls her eyes. “Listen, Erin, I live in this apartment now. It’s partly mine. I get to add decorations of my own; that’s how it works.”

“Okay, first of all, you live here because you got kicked out of your apartment and I had a spare room and let you crash here out of the goodness of my heart. It’s not ‘partly yours’ until you start paying rent.”

“That sounds like a thinly veiled hint,” Holtz says. “I’m gonna ignore it for now.”

“Secondly, you’re telling me you put out pictures of your own face in your apartments?”

“Noooo,” Holtz says. “I put out pictures of _you.”_

Erin sighs. “I don’t need a picture of your face, Holtz. I already have to look at it every day. I think I can remember what it looks like at this point.”

“Erin, let’s just take a quick second to review your decorating choices around this apartment,” Holtz says. “First. A photograph of _gravel._ ”

Erin’s eyes go to the large framed print on the wall. “It’s art,” she says.

“It’s _rocks.”_

“I like the colour scheme,” Erin mumbles defensively.

“Grey. Yeah, figures.”

“Do you have a point?”

“Number two,” Holtz says dramatically, pointing to the corner. “A single fern.”

“It’s a ficus.”

“It’s _fake._ ”

“So?” Erin blushes. “I’ve killed every plant I’ve ever tried to keep.”

“That’s impossibly alarming,” Holtz says. “Even I can keep a cactus alive, and I can barely remember to water _myself_ most of the time.”

“‘Drink water’ is the expression commonly used by humans, Holtz.”

“ _Third_ ,” Holtz says, drawing their attention now to the coffee table and poking the object on it with her big toe. “ _This._ ”

“My sculpture?”

“It’s just a cube, Erin.”

“It’s art,” Erin repeats.

“I’m sure it is. That’s my point.” She pokes the sculpture again. “ _This_ is not personal. Neither is the gravel. Or the fern.”

“Ficus.”

“You don’t have a single goddamn photo in this whole apartment,” Holtz says. “Doesn’t that make you sad?”

Erin swallows. What is she supposed to say to that?

She sets the photo back down.

Only so she doesn’t upset Holtz by removing it.

That’s all.

* * *

“Holtz.” Erin stands, hands planted on her hips, staring at the wall in front of her. “What is this?”

“It’s the phellem layer of bark tissue, harvested for commercial use primarily from _Quercus suber,_ the cork oak.” Holtz pauses. “It’s a material known for its impermeability, buoyancy, elasticity, and fire-proof properties. Commonly known as cork.”

“Thank you, Wikipedia,” Erin says with a huff. “Can you tell me why it’s hanging on my wall?”

“Thought you might like it.”

“A blank cork board? Not really.”

“Ah.” Holtz pulls something out from behind her back, a little plastic container with a bow stuck to it. “I almost forgot.”

Erin takes the container and gives it a shake, listening to the tacks jangle inside. “Thanks,” she says dryly.

Holtz leans against the wall beside the cork board. “Some people like to display mementos. Do you have any of those, or did you destroy all of them in the furnace of your bitter, unsentimental heart?”

“Wow, Holtz.”

Holtz produces a small leaf of paper from the pocket of her overalls and waves herself like it’s a fan.

“What’s that?”

“Ticket stub.”

“From what?”

“Our first date.”

“We haven’t been on any dates.”

“I _beg_ to differ.”

Erin snatches the ticket stub out of Holtz’s hand and looks it over.

“This is from that terrible play we saw, like, a year ago.”

“Yup, sure is.”

“That wasn’t a date.”

“I brought you flowers.”

“Did you?”

Holtz plucks the ticket from her fingers. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it back for my own cork board.”

Erin plucks it right back from her grasp. She pops open the container of push pins and removes one, then sticks the ticket stub right in the middle of the board, nudging the tack into the soft cork with the pad of her thumb.

“Happy?”

“I can’t tell if that’s less depressing or more depressing than it was when it was empty,” Holtz says, hands on her hips, mirroring Erin’s stance earlier, as she surveys the expanse of blank space surrounding the tiny stub. “But I’m proud of you either way. See? It’s not so hard. I knew you weren’t a robot.”

Erin rolls her eyes and pockets the container of pins. “Come on. We’re going to be late for work.”

* * *

“Where the _hell_ did you get this?”

Holtz pops her head out of the bathroom. “Get what?”

“You _know_ what.”

“Are you referring to my art?”

Erin gestures wildly at the four square canvases with colourful pop art renditions of—

“Why do you have _art_ of _us?”_

“Got ’em from a fan,” Holtz says. “I think it’s a _fantastic_ portrait of you, personally. Although, Patty looks damn good in this style. And Abby looks like she was made to be painted like this. And I look cool as hell with purple hair.” She pauses. “So really, all of us look bomb.”

“Take them down.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have to explain myself. It’s my apartment.”

“ _Our_ apartment.”

Erin huffs. “Put them in your room.”

“ _My_ roo—oh wait, that’s what you said. Never mind. I’m so used to correcting you.”

“Now, Holtzmann.”

“Alriiiiiight.”

* * *

“Who are these people?”

Holtz looks over her shoulder. “Where’d you get that?”

Erin’s eyes narrow. “It was hanging in the bathroom. Who are they?”

“My family.”

“Why in god’s name did you hang a photo of your family in my bathroom?”

“Our bathroom.”

“No. My bathroom.” Erin wrinkles her nose. “Can you open a window?”

Holtz dips her paint roller into the tray at her feet. “Can you? I’m a little busy.”

“You know, you could say thank you for letting you paint your room. Especially such an…offensively bright colour.”

“Thank you,” Holtz says. “Now could you put my family back in the bathroom and open a window?”

Erin huffs.

* * *

Erin is getting milk for her cereal, and when she shuts the fridge door she notices the magnet. The magnet with four familiar cartoon faces on it.

“Did you literally just put that there while I had the door open?”

Holtz dances past her into the kitchen. “Of course not.”

* * *

“This is actually a nice picture of us.”

Holtz doesn’t look up from channel-surfing. “Thought you might like that one.”

Erin continues dusting the bookshelf around the tiny framed photo of the four of them smiling outside the firehouse.

* * *

Erin walks past the cork board, then stops and backs up. “Did you put this newspaper article here?”

“Did you?”

“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking.”

“Why are you asking if you know it was me?”

“Could’ve been a ghost,” Erin mumbles. She touches the clipping. “This is pretty vintage, huh?”

Holtz comes up behind her and leans her chin on Erin’s shoulder, hands light on her waist. “First photo ever published of us. First _ghost_ we ever captured. It’s a historic moment.”

Erin weasels out of her embrace. “What was the point of getting me the cork board if you’re just going to fill it yourself?”

Holtz squints. “I’d hardly consider two items to be filling it.”

“I know you. You’re going to keep putting things up until suddenly it’s full and I’m going to wonder where it all came from.”

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

“I can _be_ sentimental, alright?”

“Never said you couldn’t.”

“Yes you did,” Erin says. “Several times. You told me I had a ‘bitter, unsentimental heart.’”

“Welllllllllll,” Holtz drawls. “I’ve yet to be proven otherwise.”

Erin stares at her for several long seconds, then she turns on her heel and walks away.

“Erin, wait, I didn’t mean to—”

“You want to see sentiment? I’ll show you sentiment,” she snaps.

She storms into her bedroom and goes right for her closet, stretching on her tip toes to reach the shoe box perching on the top shelf. She pulls it down and turns to see Holtz standing in the doorway, looking uncharacteristically apologetic. She opens her mouth to say something but Erin cuts her off as she knocks the lid off the box and sets it on the edge of her bed.

“This,” she says, holding up a small piece of metal, “is a piece of one of Rowan’s devices, the one that was in the subway. The one that brought Patty to us and brought the Ghostbusters together.” She rifles through the box. “ _This_ is a seashell from that time when we all blew off work that day last June and drove out to the beach, and you and Kevin had a sandcastle-building competition, and you chased me into the waves and I cut my foot open on a barnacle and couldn’t walk and you carried me all the way back to the car and cleaned up the cut for me.”

Holtz smiles and takes a step further into the room.

“This is a bookmark that I was given by the owner of that little bookstore we did a signing at a few years ago, my first signing with Abby since I left her and turned my back on our book. But there we were, having a signing—a _signing_ , a public signing—and she was my best friend again and everything was _right_ , _finally_.” Erin throws the bookmark back in the box and grabs a shard of ceramic instead. “This is a fragment of that mug that you got me for my birthday this year, the one that I dropped three days later because you were hiding under my desk to jump out and scare me, and I _shattered_ it and I was so _devastated_ because I really _fucking_ loved that mug and I couldn’t believe that I had destroyed it so quickly.”

Holtz steps even closer.

“And this,” Erin says, voice shaking as she pulls a notebook out of the box and unwinds the string holding it closed, letting the pages fall open. “This is a flower from the bouquet you got me when we went to that _stupid_ , _terrible_ goddamn play last year, and I got home in a rage because of how _terrible_ that play was, and I took this _fucking_ rose and put it in here to press so I could keep it forever.”

She slams the book shut.

“So don’t you _dare_ say I’m not sentimental, Holtzmann,” she says angrily. “Just because I don’t like to put my memories on the wall for everyone to see doesn’t mean that I—”

Holtz kisses her.

Holtz kisses her, mouth hot, lips crushed together.

And then she’s not not kissing her. She’s standing there as if nothing happened.

“Sorry for interrupting,” she says calmly. “What were you saying? Just because you don’t put your memories on the wall…”

“Just—just because—just because I don’t put my memories on the wall for everyone to see doesn’t mean that I—why did you just kiss me?”

Holtz shrugs casually. “We’re dating.”

“We’re not dating.”

“Okay,” Holtz says. “I’m gonna make spaghetti.”

Erin blinks at the non-sequitur. “What?”

Holtz mimes twirling a fork and slurping. “Dinner?”

“Oh. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Erin watches her leave the room.

Then she packs up her little box of memories and returns it to her shelf, unable to keep from smiling as she does so.

* * *

It ends with a picture.

“Can I light this on fire?”

Erin looks down to see Holtz nudging the gravel print with her toe.

“Absolutely not,” Erin says. “That’s going in storage.”

“Why bother?”

“In case I ever feel like redecorating,” Erin says pointedly.

Holtz grins. “Now you’re just trying to hurt my feelings.”

Erin rolls her eyes and turns her attention back to the huge framed print that she’s trying to hang. “Is this straight?”

“You know I’m not a good judge of that particular attribute,” Holtz teases.

“Can you get me the level, then?”

“Come on, no appreciation for that fantastic gay joke?”

“You’re a fantastic gay joke,” Erin mumbles.

Holtz snickers behind her. “I’ll go find the level.”

Erin takes a step back, surveying the picture.

Despite not being straight, it looks good. Really good. Like it was made to hang on her wall.

_Their_ wall.

There’s a loud crash behind her.

“Heyyyy, Erin?” Holtz calls from the kitchen a second later. “Can you come here? I broke…everything.”

Erin shakes her head in amusement.

Then she takes one last look at the large, black-and-white wedding photo on the wall.

_Their_ wedding photo.

And she smiles.

“I’m on my way,” she calls back.


End file.
